Conference University of Salzburg 26-27th of March: International Perspectives on School Quality and Teacher Education (original) (raw)
Conference initiated by Roland Bernhard in the framework of the SQTE-project and designed together with Ulrike Greiner (Salzburg), Burkhard Gniewosz (Salzburg), Katharine Burn (Oxford) and Pam Sammons (Oxford). This conference will bring together leading international researchers from the fields of School Effectiveness and Improvement Research and Teacher Education Research to discuss the overarching question of how we can link these different research strands in order to contribute productively to school quality and teacher education quality in a specific country. The conference is part of an ongoing research project conducted by the University of Salzburg in cooperation with the University of Oxford. In educational research, school quality is discussed mainly within the theoretical frameworks of: (1) School or Educational Effectiveness Research (SER/EER), a discipline that seeks to understand the key factors and their interactions that lead to more or less effective classrooms, schools and education systems; and (2) School improvement research (SIR) in which school improvement is understood as a distinct approach to educational change that enhances student outcomes, as well as strengthening schools’ capacity for managing change. As the protagonists who actually have to realise school quality in practice, it is teachers and headteachers who are the key drivers of school improvement. The quality of teaching and learning and of professional leadership are the key determinants since the process of improvement relates not just to the teaching competence of classroom practitioners but also to the nature of the school climate and the leadership practices that promote and sustain them. Teacher Education Research is concerned with the development of teachers’ identities, competences and dispositions. It focuses not only on the content of teacher education curricula but also on the nature of the process of learning to teach and its implications for the way in which those curricula are structured and sequenced – both within initial teacher education (ITE) and in relation to teachers’ continued professional learning (CPD). Just as Teacher Education Research considers the needs of teachers themselves, so it also explores the kinds of dispositions, knowledge and skills needed by all those engaged in teacher education – school-based mentors and coaches as well as university-based tutors and external experts – if they are to achieve the improvements to which they aspire. Teacher Education Research has a vital role to play in informing educational policy and ensuring that both ITE and CPD (including the professional formation of headteachers) are research-informed.
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